Weight Watchers Points Plus

07/31/2011

The first point to make is that watermelon is high in important micronutrients. These are all the important things in food other than fat, fiber and protein- called macronutrients.

Melons in general have been shown to contain important disease preventing properties.

As a general rule, the higher your consumption of fruits and vegetables, the easier it will be to lose weight.

The second point to focus on is your overall sugar intake. Most people eat a ton of sugar on a daily basis. If you have a sweet tooth you might want to work to replace an unhealthy sweet with a healthy one.

This might sound like an obvious point, but most people have a very hard time doing this. Sugar is a beast!

So to answer your question: if you have a relatively low sugar intake, watermelon is a great way to satisfy your sweet tooth. If you crave sweets, its a great alternative. But it counts after the first portion according to the PEERtrainer Cheat System so be mindful of your overall daily intake.

What About Watermelon for those people following Weight Watchers Points Plus?

This adds a new wrinkle, because right now Weight Watchers basically allows people unlimited fruit consumption. If you are following Weight Watchers, we would suggest keeping a close eye on your overall daily sugar consumption. One big weakness to their program is that there is no mechanism to keep your sugar in check.

03/30/2011

If you have stopped losing weight on Weight Watchers or started to “plateau” this article will outline some steps and ideas that will help you get to the next phase of your journey. (If that is what you really want deep down!)

It is helpful to think about your path to weight loss and better health as a series of steps and stages. This will help you keep perspective and not be frustrated. Weight Watchers is an incredible resource to help you get you started down the path of getting things in control. It teaches you to make better decisions, and teaches you the critically important skill of portion control. It successfully puts you into step one of the process!

It is likely that regardless of where you are now, the money you spent on Weight Watchers was well worth it. At most you might have spent a couple hundred dollars getting you started down a path that literally could add years to your life. And also quality years! Which brings us to step #1:

1. The single most important thing to do if you have stopped losing weight, or even started to regain some weight is to not beat yourself up.

So often at PEERtrainer we see people who have a deeply embedded version of what “should” be true in their path to losing weight. People think to themselves that since they are following the system, they should be losing weight. It doesn’t matter if you are twenty or two hundred pounds overweight.

You didn’t get to this point in a straight line. You are not going to lose it in the same manner. Regardless of how much weight you have lost, there are some skills you have learned and it is important that you keep them in mind.

The first skill that you have learned so far is portion control. It is impossible for us to overemphasize the importance of this or the difficulty of this. Almost every single person that starts the weight loss process has no understanding of how much food or how many calories they are consuming. When you start counting points (points plus is the latest marketing twist on this) you start getting a handle on how much you are actually eating.

This process can take a long time, and as long as you have started this in good faith, consider it a big big win. It is likely that there are other wins as well. As you are reading this, stop and ask yourself “what do I know now that I did not know when I started Weight Watchers?”

You might even want to write your answer down in the comments section below. (You can do this anonymously.)

2. The next step you want to take to blast through this phase is to figure out how permanent the changes you have made to your diet are- and are they working? Weight Watchers is an effective program because they give you a lot of room to work within your current reality. The problem though is that even with the new Points Plus Program it is possible to not eat well and still follow the system. It is harder than before, but based on the public logs we see at PEERtrainer, people can still follow the system and not engage in fundamental diet change.

Have you started to incorporate a lot more vegetables in your diet? How much have you reduced your sugar intake? It may be that the power of simple portion control has stopped working and you need to move to the next stage, and get a lot more aggressive with change, not restriction.

You can only get so far restricting yourself. It is like a beach ball that you push under water. At some point it will come flying back up. The yo-yo diet cycle that you are probably familiar with is almost completely a result of this. One stops the yo-yo cycle by permanently shifting your food choices. The great thing is that when you make some choices and start eating new foods, it will give you the freedom to really indulge every now and then and not be a slave to portion control.

One controversial observation is that the Weight Watchers Points for fruit has changed with Points Plus. There is some confusion about the exact rules, but essentially Weight Watchers now allows or encourages high fruit consumption. This is great as you get started, but as you progress through your stages, you need to keep an eye on your fruit consumption in relation to your total sugar intake.

3. You think discipline is your problem. This is something that we see ALL THE TIME. People are basically kicking their own butts by thinking "it's all in my mind, and I just need to be more disciplined." People keep restricting their diets, AND rev up their workouts. This is usually a recipe for disaster.

It creates a vicious cycle where you start working out too hard, and then need the cheesburger and coke. You get into a mode where you are burning sugar and not fat. You need to invert this and get into a mode where you are burning fat not sugar. The combination of a dramatically higher green vegetable intake, combined with a slower pace of exercise will really help you break through the plateau.

The Weight Watchers Points system has taught you portion control. That is something that you will always know. The shift in exercise and diet are really building blocks on top of this. As you make this shift, you are entering a new phase of your process.

4. It hasn't really become intolerable to you. This is something else that we see with people who are stuck on Weight Watchers or any other program or plan. Their weight loss is not a priority because the pain has not become acute. This may or may not be true for you, but if it is it can be one of the biggest and hardest stumbling blocks to overcome.

You may be thinking for example that your husband or wife isn't going to leave you - and you already look much better than you did, so why not have the ice cream? Deep down, you're really ok with the weight you are and you're not really motivated, you haven't made the decision (de-cide) to cut off all other possibilities to do something different.

This is a reality for many people. We have been in situations where we have really pushed this question, and the answer from some people was that it truly had not become intolerable. That was their decision, and totally fine.

5. This is another very interesting bit of reality for many people. It is possible that you still love the coffee and lunch get-togethers fraught with food binges because you crave the friendship more than your health.

We all want a place to commiserate and where our spouses don't have to listen to us. (Where everybody knows your name?) Most of the places that you can actually find someone that understands you are over lunches, cocktails and food. It may be that you need the understanding and interaction so badly, that you just deal with the extra pounds.

6. The final observation that we have for many people on a plateau is that you have the belief that this is so and this is what should be. We see people say "I'm 60, I've had kids and this is what happens when you get older". You have no one in your life that's older that you've seen be fit, energetic and happy and even if they are, you don't want to be married to the gym 3 times a day.

This is 100% changeable. If you have the belief that it is too late for you, you are 100% wrong. It is never ever ever ever ever ever too late to make changes and have those changes mean something. This article will help you change that belief:

Q: I'm gaining weight on the Weight Watchers Points Plus Program, what do I do?

A: There could be any number of reasons this is taking place. It is possible that you are not counting your points correctly, and you are in fact eating more than you realize. Most likely you have hit a place where your body is not getting the nutrients it needs, and is retaining weight as a way of protecting itself. If you are not eating a diet that is "plant strong" weight loss is a lot harder.

You also should consider reducing the gluten in your diet. Some people respond extremely well to a reduction in all forms of wheat and gluten. Weight Watchers has taught you to increase fiber and protein. If this is not working for you, you need to increase your greens dramatically, reduce your sugar (and fructose!), and experiment with gluten reduction. Weight Watchers has also taught you to decrease fat, but this can be incomplete advice because some fat is actually good. Any animal fat or processed oils are incredibly bad for you because they are very difficult for your body to process. Other fats like Coconut Oil are actually good for you and help you speed up your metabolism and give you energy.

03/20/2011

There is one critical adjustment one needs to make to stop being hungry on a diet. You need to shift your focus away from "bad food elimination" and towards "foods you can eat in any quantity." This article will explain in detail how to do this and why this approach works.

If you are like most people, when you decide you want to lose weight you get in "dieting" mode in your mind. For most people, this involves eating fewer foods that you enjoy and more foods that you don't. "Diet Foods" in your mind are likely to have less sugar, less salt and not taste good.

This process is unenjoyable, and ultimately unsustainable primarily because it leaves you hungry all the time. The single most popular complaint by people doing a "traditional" diet is that they are always hungry.

At PEERtrainer over the years we have developed a very loose concept that we have called "Diet Fusion" which has helped people start to feel less hungry. Very simply this involves combining portion control with a nutrient dense diet and figuring out the foods that give you the most energy. Nutrient dense means a diet very high in green vegetables and some other foods that science has shown to help fight hunger.

What is interesting about this "fusion" approach is that it combines very mainstream diet ideas such as portion control (something strongly advocated by Weight Watchers) with some more advanced ideas from often hard to follow health and nutrition experts.

Over the years, this has worked really well, and will work for you. When you stick to keeping an eye on your portions, but you also get very aggressive with the foods you can eat unlimited amounts of, good things will happen.

You will feel less hungry and you will also have some "wiggle room" to really enjoy the foods that you enjoy. Losing weight and getting healthy doesn't need to be an all or nothing, zero sum game. At PEERtrainer we have recently built upon this idea of Diet Fusion, by launching something we call The Cheat System.

People had told us that they loved the Diet Fusion idea, but that they wanted some more stucture. "Tell me exactly what to do, and give me a list of foods to eat and foods to not eat so much of." So we did exactly this, and we also made it free.

We decided to write this particular article today after getting this comment in an email that someone sent us. This person had lost 11 pounds in two months, and was describing some of the success on the Point Of No Return Program. (Where we deal with the psychological aspects of weight loss). There is never one single thing that helps people, but she did make this comment:

"I have also been trying the CheatSystem, and I am finding it very helpful.... Past diet plans have left me hungry to the point of some light headedness, the constant supply of free foods, and filling my meal plates with those foods has helped. ALOT...."

This is something we are seeing a lot. We do a lot of work on the mental aspect of weight loss, but we find that a lot of the time, people are simply hungry. When you eat a lot of the "free foods" you will be filled up. But you will also find that your body is getting the nutrients it needs. When you eat these foods, your body starts to feel better, which results in fewer food cravings.

The Cheat System is designed to really make it easy for you, and show you how to make this shift. However, it does ask you to make some decisions. The neat thing is that you do get some instant rewards from making these good decisions. It is like anything in life- when you work hard and make good decisions, things in your life improve.

It is the same thing with eating. If you have not yet downloaded your copy of the Cheat System, you can do so here.

Recipes To Help You Not Be Hungry

In addition to the Cheat System, we have also developed a series of recipes that show you how to eat in a way that will leave you fuller, less hungry and give you energy.

The first recipe is something we call the "5 Minute Hunger Cure" This recipe is easy to make, doesn't cost all that much, but also includes a TON of hunger fighting nutrients. Best of all this recipe makes a bg quantity. If there is one thing we have learned it is that you want to have as much good food in your fridge as possible.

03/15/2011

We have been sent a series of emails asking why Weight Watchers allows unlimited fruit but the PEERtrainer Cheat System makes you count it after the first serving. With a few exceptions.

The first point to make here is that the people who do Weight Watchers and those who have really "gotten into" PT are fairly distinct. We would observe that the two tools serve people at different phases.

Weight Watchers is an excellent tool for people who are just starting to get their eating and weight under control, and who are starting the process of making better food decisions. If you are eating the standard Western or American diet that is high in processed foods and high in sugar, a shift to more fruit makes a ton of sense.

Yes, fruit contains a lot of sugar, but it also contains important nutrients, and as you make this shift you are essentially replacing worthless sugar with some sugar that has more vitamins, minerals and important micronutrients and phytochemicals. These added nutrients are critical to your long term health.

Certain fruits, especially berries have some very powerful health promoting aspects to them. In fact, Strawberries and Blueberries are unlimited on the Cheat System if they are organic. Citrus also has some unique properties to it. Grapefruit is a powerful food in particular, and also one of the few unlimited fruits on the Cheat System.

That said, a lot of experts who deal with health, nutrition and peak performance recommend a limiting or even an elimination of fruit. You'll probably want to start doing that after you have lost your first amount of weight, and that weight loss is sustainable.

You will only get to this place by making a shift to a much more nutrient dense diet, that includes lots of greens, vegetables, beans, a small amount of grass fed meat, good eye on portion control. And it can take time to transition. Weight Watchers is excellent in particular in teaching you portion control, and basically getting a solid set of "training wheels" going for you. Most people can't just jump in and do something like the Cheat System after doing the typical diet.

Once you do get to this point, you are going to be getting enough nutrients in your diet that you can begin to reduce your fruit, especially in relation to your overall vegetable intake. Our view is that you don't want to eliminate fruit, especially berries, cherries and grapefruit. But you are having health problems, you are hitting a weight loss plateau, or you want to improve your athletic performances you will want to start taking a closer look at this.

Timothy Ferriss, who has written an interesting new book called The 4 Hour Body, says that if your goal is weight loss, "don't eat fruit." Period. He writes, "Humans don't need fruit six days a week, and they certainly don't need it year round." In his view, the principal sugar in fruit, fructose ends up getting converted into a substance which ends up being stored as fat "more efficiently than almost all other carbohydrates."

Robert Young, PhD, says in his book, The pH Miracle For Weight Loss, "most fruits are high in sugar...despite the nutrients they also contain, are best avoided." He goes on to assert that "You will not lose weight, or lose it quickly, or keep it off, if you are eating high sugar fruits." He also asserts that fruit is especially bad for diabetics.

Joel Fuhrman, M.D. does not take as strict a view on fruit. In his food scoring system, green vegetables score much higher than any fruit. So anyone following that system will prioritize vegetables over fruit. However, for people who are sick or who have autoimmune diseases, Fuhrman recommends cutting fruit way down. In the case of eczema, he advises very low levels.

From our perspective, we are seeing a pattern where nobody disputes the nutritional benefits of fruit, but people do question the effects of sugar on weight and health. Given the overwhelming amount of sugar people eat in their diets, and the very low levels of green vegetables, we thought that it made sense to guide people in the direction we did.

To download your free copy of the PEERtrainer Cheat System, go to this page.

"I was probably the first "at goal" type person to convert to WW's new plan and actually GAIN weight. I'm still a great proponent of the plan as I feel we could all greatly inprove our wellness by swinging more towards a whole and/or plant-based diet, but I definitely have to count my fruit overwise those skinny jeans won't fit for long. (Gotta admit, for *me*, the WW plan seems much less effective if you're already "clean" without weight to lose.)"

"Thanks for this post, it really resonates with me at this specific point in my weight loss journey. Your Cheat system is exactly what I needed! I hate to use this word, but it really is :PERFECT: for me! I feel like PT had me in mind when creating this! Ha! I have reduced my excess fruit intake and have increased my vegetables... I still have much work ahead, but I am very confident I will reach my lofty goals sticking with this program. I didn't realize how much of a dependency I had for sugar until I started paying closer attention recently with my new focus on the Cheat System... The excess sugars (even fruits in excess!) in my diet are killing me!

I just wanted to add that when I first joined PT back in 2007, I was in the obese weight range. About 14 months later I was finally in the normal weight range. I think when you first start out on the weight loss journey, just cutting out th...e junk and eating natural whole foods is great! Bring on the fruits! :D However, once you are hovering in the normal weight range and it is your time to kick it up a notch, then definitely work the Cheat System! I run marathons for fun, so my focus might be different than most folks, I'm guessing... but I'd still recommend this for optimal performance, even if you are just walking around the block! My energy levels have soared just by increasing my greens! I feel fantastic!"

03/07/2011

The No Flour, No Sugar Diet continues to be of interest to members of the PEERtrainer community. We found this interesting, because the book was first published in 2006, roughly 5 years ago.

We see a lot of diet approaches come and go, and when one "sticks around" it is worth looking into and seeing what benefit people are experiencing from it. In the PEERtrainer community forum, there is a discussion thread (called the No Flour, No Sugar Diet ) that spans 4 years, and contains a number of comments from people claiming to have lost weight following the advice that the book outlines.

We took a look at the advice the book gives (it is very simple and is summarized in this article) and found some very clear benefits. We also have some observations on the potential drawbacks, as well as some recommendations to mitigate those.

The very simple advice that the book gives is to "eliminate" all foods that contain flour and added sugar from your diet. And to "still enjoy lean meats, brown rice, low-fat dairy products, vegetables, fruits, and other goodies."

Some of this is pretty standard advice, but we do like that Dr. Gott brings focus to the idea that flour in particular is a substance that needs to be targeted. We observe that there is close to an epidemic of gluten intolerance and sensitivity in this country. For whatever reason, people have begun reacting badly to a substance that really seemed to not wreak the havoc in the past that it does appear to now.

The idea of focusing on alternatives to any form of wheat or gluten is a key part of the PEERtrainer Cheat System. (link takes you to free download page.) Through personal experience, experience with PEERtrainer members and discussions with numerous MD's, we have come to believe that this focus is very well placed.

That said, we have also become advocates of a diet that focuses on foods with extremely high nutritional content (or density.) The reality is that when you begin down the road towards flour, wheat and gluten elimination you are better off replacing the minimal nutrient density of flour with foods extremely high in nutrients, rather than foods with moderately higher nutrient density levels.

While Dr. Gott does focus on vegetables as part of a "balanced diet" we would observe that many people are "very unbalanced" in terms of their nutritional intake when they come to the table. These people will needs years of "nutritional therapy" to get their bodies back into a state of balance. Simply following a "balanced diet" will often not bring people back into balance quickly.

Simply switching to whole grains and brown rice will not pack as much of a punch as switching to a diet that includes very high levels of greens. For example, on the nutritional ranking system that Dr. Fuhrman outlines in his book 'Eat For Health" brown rice contains roughly 4% of the health promoting "phytonutrients" that are contained in greens like Kale and Collared Greens.

These distinctions in nutrient density values were not in print when the "No Flour, No Sugar Diet" was published, and are a relatively recent addition to the nutritional discussion.

It is important to note that while the PEERtrainer Cheat System does incorporate these nutritional distinctions, we do realize that people live in the "real world" and need to find a balance between getting high doses of nutrient dense foods and enjoying themselves.

When you make some choices in your diet, we have found that this gives people some wiggle room to stay on track. When you combine a no or low flour diet, with very nutrient dense foods, good portion control and a heavy dose of giving yourself a break, good things tend to happen.

The most important thing is that people stay on track, and do a diet that will bring them back into balance without going nuts in the process.

This is a tough "prescription" for people who are faced with giving up their beloved Croissant. One thing we observe from experience is that when the nutrient density of your diet begins to dramatically increase, your food cravings begin to decrease. This is a process, and it is very important not to beat yourself up in the process. You didn't get out of balance overnight, and there is no reason to expect that you can reverse this overnight.

The answer to this question is that it is definitely a good start. Obviously reduction in sugar will help anyone, including diabetics. Reducing refined and processed foods that contain a lot of flour will also help anyone. The key for diabetics is to not only decrease these foods but also increase the greens and other vegetables. A diet very high in greens and vegetables will help your body regain balance.

Can I Do The No Flour No Sugar Diet With Weight Watchers?

This is actually an excellent idea. If you combine the portion control that Weight Watchers teaches you, along with a heavy reduction in flour and sugar, great things are likely to happen. If you also dramatically improve the nutrient density of your diet on top of this, you will be unstoppable. The PEERtrainer Cheat System is proving to be an excellent tool to help people on the path to nutritional excellence.

02/20/2009

For whatever reason, people are constantly trying to figure out how to do Weight Watchers on their own. We have some ideas for you, but it first makes sense to outline the strengths of Weight Watchers before you decide to set out on your own.

The primary service that Weight Watchers provides, is that they help people learn portion control. If you are going to succeed on your own, you will need to first master that, and understand how a portion relates to calories.

If you are going to lose weight on your own, in addition to getting a handle on portion control, you will need some sort of mechanism to make better food choices. You will need a simple system that guides you towards certain foods and away from others. The new PEERtrainer Cheat System provides a good starting point. It contains a list of unlimited foods, foods to start to move away from, and a very basic system to help you keep track of your portions.

Drilling down a bit further, beyond the main concepts of portion control and better choices, you'll need to decide whether or not you want to follow their system, or do portion control on your own.

If you decide you really like the Points System, know that there are many people who are Weight Watchers lifers. It works for them, for the way they live. This is something you'll need to figure out on your own.

There are four very fundamental areas you need to focus on to successfully do Weight Watchers on your own.

(1) The company sells a line of electronic trackers that you take with you to calculate points and keep you on track. This is really an excellent accountability tool. You can get them right on Amazon, and there are a couple different versions:

Weight Watchers often advise weighing in once per week. I sometimes weight twice per day. If you are trying to decide what to have for dinner, jump on the scale and see where you are. A nice incentive to have a huge salad for dinner if you are not at the number you want.

(3) Part of the power of Weight Watchers are their tips and recipes that you get in meetings and online. This very practical advice helps you make changes in your real life. The company has some books and publications that can help you follow the program on your own: